The sport of paintball has grown into an international phenomenon. Paintball combines aspects of the childhood games such as tag and hide and seek, but is far more challenging and sophisticated. Typically, a group of players divides into two teams to play capture the flag. The object is to capture the other team's flag while protecting your own. While trying to capture the opponent's flag, players also eliminate opposing players by tagging them with a paintball bullet expelled from a special air gun called a marker. In just thirty years of existence, paintball has become one of the world's most exciting outdoor participation sports played men and women of all ages and lifestyles. One popular on line auction website reports more searches for paintball items than for any other sports listing. Spending for equipment and paraphernalia tops approximately two hundred twenty five million dollars per year. Paintball, a harmless but realistic facsimile of combat, is a highly competitive sport. A serious player may preserve and study a visual, photographic or video record of his or her performance on the field for training purposes. The prior art has put forth several designs for camera capability for paintball guns and hunting shotguns and rifles.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,661,221 to Larry Holmberg describes a device mount for attaching electronic devices to a weapon. This device comprises a support portion and a side portion. The support portion, adapted to support a device, includes a plurality of mounting apertures and is coupled to the support portion. The side portion, positioned at a right angle to the support portion, has two sides. The first side is positioned at a right angle and connects to the support portion. The second side has a mounting connection portion for connecting the device mount to a weapon.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,604,420 to Jeffrey R. Moody, Kevin L. Moody, and James R. Dodson describes a gun and bow camera mount providing an apparatus capable of mounting a conventional hand held camera to any of various hunting weapons. The gun and bow camera mount include a camera support having a camera mount resiliently biased against a carriage. The camera mount portion secures to a conventional hunting weapon such that the shooting vector is fixed in a direction parallel to the line of fire of the weapon.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,425,697 to Jeff C. Potts and Richard M. Allen describes a universal camera mounting assembly comprising an assembly for a weapon including a mount for direct attachment to the weapon wherein a parallelogram linkage includes a pair of depending swing arms, each of which is pivotally secured at one end in the mount and at the opposite end a camera support.
None of these prior art references describe the present invention.